"Capacitive Touch"
Ella's leggings slip easily off the smooth dark powder-coated aluminium of her right leg
nobody asks her what happened to it out of fear of getting their hardware shorted out, but the rumor that she just wanted one and prefers it over a "real" limb is close to the truth
aluminium, titanium, and carbon fiber are just more reliable and comfortable than flesh, blood, and bone for her, and smooth aluminium beats shaving
she'd had it installed, along with a carbon fiber hip distinctly wider than the bone it replaced, at the same time she got her GRS
the Integration Debug menu in her brain implant isn't supposed to be directly accessible, but she was never particularly concerned with what the engineers who designed her augmentations thought
with the soft sound of servomotors, the control loops release and her right leg goes limp
she feels the brain implant downclock a bit as it loses access to the battery bank in her thigh
the surgery to run wires down her spine was difficult, but the gain in sensation from having the lower half of her body running over copper rather than neurons is most definitely worth it to her
she grabs the ball-nosed hex driver driver with a piece of blue electrical tape around the handle from the toolbox
she and SP, her girlfriend, had standardized most common screws in their bodies and equipment on blue, red, and green, with blue being the largest
when SP wrapped the same tape around her tools and put them in Ella's toolbox, it felt more permanent and important than moving in together
SP's name comes from her model designation, S-3220P, and she pronounces it "espy"
the company that made her went out of business a few years ago in the last economic downturn and as the years go on, she's had to replace more and more of her parts with homemade replacements, fewer and fewer of which are actually to manufacturer spec
her chest panel, for example, is the result of years of staring enviously at other women and several weeks in the machine shop to make a striking carbon fiber corset shape with a perfect hourglass figure
Ella lifts her knee back behind her head as she leans over to unscrew her leg from the ball joint at her hip
a thick cable carrying power and data snakes around where the two "bones" come together and she unplugs it
"babe, what *are* you doing?" SP asks, the confusion clear in her synthesized voice
"creating a sensation I hope you'll think is hot~" she replies, taking off her shirt and sports bra
"well, if you're doing it to me, it's definitely hot"
"gay."
"so are you"
she leans over from the bed to grab a piece of machined plastic with metal pins sticking out of one side and ribbon cables on the other, which she connects to the leg, tightening screws to push the pins against connectors
the ribbon cables go to a mess of level shifter boards, a precariously soldered microcontroller, and a connector that's immediately familiar to SP, who smiles and picks up the hex driver
"I.. I thought you might want to try it"
"ever since you got capacitive touch working, I've wondered what it felt like"
"wonder no longer, cariño" she says, pulling SP's shining leg off as she loosened the final screw
the leg starts to twitch, servos coming back to life as she pushes the connector together
Ella grabs her girlfriend's newly-connected thigh and she makes a sharp beep
"I have something else for you to try. turn on the electromagnets in your fingers" she says flirtatiously
she brushes her hand near the leg and lets out another sharp beep, her speech synthesis not capable of expressing the pleasure
"you,, you put magnetic field sensors in it"
"because of your magnets and because I.. I love you"
if SP's face were capable of it, she'd be blushing redder than the red grease in her gearboxes
"I know the captouch doesn't work too well with my fingers being metal and plastic, so I was looking into.."
"yes, babe, I got ahold of a bunch of really sensitive magnetic field sensors to better be gay with you"
"well then, let's get to it" she says, unplugging the adapter for her girlfriend's leg and putting hers back on
even with SP's magnets a few inches away from her leg, Ella's face breaks into a smile
as the plastic of SP's fingers clack against the metal of her leg, Ella starts to moan with pleasure
she maneuvers her other leg between SP's cold metal legs, pushes her torso against the wall and pulls herself towards the robot with a magnetic hand on her thigh
"you like that~?" SP asks, using the carefully tuned speech synthesis parameters that she'd worked so hard on
Ella nods and moans even more, her eyes rolling back in her head for a moment
SP turns off her magnets and disentangles Ella from her
"¿por qué pa- why'd you stop?" Ella asks, switching languages instinctively even though she doesn't need to
"I just got a bit overwhelmed and thought you might be too"
"fair; I was getting close" Ella replies, panting a bit
"you're wonderful and that was amazing, but.." her words trail off into a series of beeps that Ella's brain implant can't properly decode
it's a serialized emotion and she can tell that it's complicated and too foreign to really sum up in a human language, but she relates it somewhat to her dysphoria and to the euphoria that she feels around her
Ella sits up suddenly
"I just remembered something that I was going to tell you about"
"oh?" SP replies, bracing for an infodump
"when I was working on captouch, I found some research into applying it to carbon fiber, and it seems pretty doable with the parts we have"
SP looks down at her carbon fiber corsage and smiles
"I can't wait to feel your touch on my tits"
"I can't wait to hear you beepmoan about it"
FIN.